The Joy of Six: terrible managerial stints

From the Dumbarton gaffer who lost 39 out of 46 league games to the Manchester United one judged 'the worst manager there's ever been' in a libel case, we run the rule over half-a-dozen of the most disastrous appointments of all time

Dumbarton started the 1995-96 Scottish First Division season well, winning their first two matches. An hour before their third fixture, against Dunfermline, they appointed Fallon as manager (strangely his assistant, Alastair McLeod, was the brother of his predecessor, Murdo). They lost that game 4-0, and it was downhill from there. In fact, though Fallon was in charge for 34 of the 36 games that season, his team won more points from the other two. They finished with 11, 25 fewer than the next worst team. As any reasonable person would expect, the board acted immediately - offering Fallon a new contract. "I feel that it was an unfair playing field for us as we were up against it financially," he moped of the dismal season. "The aim now will be to stabilise the club and make a determined effort to get back up." Fallon's determined effort the following season amounted to one win from 12 games, eight of which - including his last five - were lost. He left in November. In all, Boghead enjoyed only one home win in Fallon's 14 months in charge and his overall league record reads: Played: 46. Won: 2. Drawn: 5. Lost: 39. Simon Burnton

2) Johnny Cochrane, Reading 1939

A decidedly average player, Cochrane is fondly remembered as a manager at St Mirren, where he spent 12 years and won the Scottish Cup in 1926. He then moved to Sunderland where he spent 11 years, winning the league in 1936 and the FA Cup a year later, and remains perhaps the club's greatest ever tactician. So when he applied for the Reading job in March 1939, the board couldn't believe their luck. He arrived on March 31, signing a three-year-contract on a jaw-dropping £1,000-a-year salary, and the club prepared for certain success. But they reckoned without Cochrane's alarmingly relaxed ways. One player described life under the maverick boss thus: "Just before a game this man wearing a bowler hat, smoking a cigar and drinking a whisky would pop his head round the dressing-room door and ask: 'Who are we playing today?'" He was sacked after just 14 days, having won one and lost one of four games in charge - though he missed one of those, allegedly with a bout of influenza. The same influenza that meant he missed several training sessions and was by all accounts largely restricted, the poor lamb, to the bar at Reading's Great Western Hotel. That September war broke out, and Cochrane never worked in football again. SB

3) Hristo Stoichkov, Bulgaria 2004-07

Representing the managerial sub-genre of great-players-terrible-coaches (see also Bryan Robson, Lothar Matthäus et al) is the former Ballon d'Or winner. "I do not believe in tactics," he says, encouragingly for a coach. Even so, a 1-1 draw against Malta apart, his off-field antics were more calamitous than his team's performances. He got a four-match touchline ban for reacting to defeat against Sweden by screaming abuse at everyone from the referee to the then Uefa president Lennart Johansson. His man management was so bad that he lost two captains to sudden international retirement after arguments. He also fell out with the whole of Romania, accusing them of fixing a game against the Netherlands and calling them a nation of "mamaliga lovers", (mamaliga being a dish made from cornmeal, similar to polenta). A Romanian TV channel promptly dispatched a reporter, carrying a plate of the delicacy, to follow Stoichkov around until he tried some. In April this year he abruptly quit to take over at La Liga side Celta Vigo, prompting outrage among Bulgarian fans who felt he had abused his position to advertise his services to Europe's top clubs. He left the Spanish side in October, by which time they were 11th in the Segunda, claiming that he was struggling to live without his parents. SB

4) David Platt, Sampdoria 1998-99

Azeglio Vicini, president of the Italian Coaches' Association, threatened to resign upon hearing of Platt's appointment on a three-year, £20,000-a-week contract which he described as "an insult to all Italian coaches", adding: "He's not even qualified to coach the reserve side." Indeed, Platt's lack of coaching qualifications and Italy's love of random regulations meant he could never even sit on his team's bench and was forced to work under the title of "supervisor" while Giorgio Veneri, who had no experience above Serie C level, was named manager. "To all intents and purposes, he is our coach," insisted the club president, Enrico Mantovani. Some people welcomed the appointment, Gianluca Vialli hailing "a visionary decision" and calling Platt "the future of football coaching". Perhaps, but it was a very short-term future. Platt resigned after 48 days and six games, having dropped the team's one good player, the Argentinian Ariel Ortega, signed Lee Sharpe on loan, earned three points and taken his team from 13th (mid-table) to 17th (second bottom). By the end of that season Samp were in Serie B for the first time since 1982. SB

5) Franck Sauzée, Hibernian December 2001-February 2002

Alex McLeish's Hibernian had been beginning to splutter, so when he grabbed the Rangers job with both hands, it was clear his successor would be left with a rebuilding job on his hands. Perhaps not the greatest time to ask your best player to hang up his boots and embark on a rookie managerial career, then, and even the man himself - much-loved French defender Franck Sauzée - had doubts: "Sometimes you see players with great experience who aren't good managers. I may be the worst manager you've ever seen in Scotland, you know."

He had that damn straight, though he didn't start too badly; while two losses and two draws weren't great, the second point came after a last-minute equaliser in the Edinburgh derby. But the wheels really came off at the turn of the year: Hibs drew three and lost four in the league, including four-goal shellackings by Aberdeen and Motherwell; needed a replay to get past Second Division Stranraer in the Scottish Cup only to then ship another four in the next round at Ibrox; and lost the semi-final of the League Cup to First Division Ayr. After a tedious 1-1 draw at home to Dunfermline left Hibs second bottom with only a terrible St Johnstone side saving their utter embarrassment, the die was cast: after failing to win any of his 12 league games in charge, Sauzée was replaced by Bobby Williamson, who immediately posted back-to-back 3-0 victories. Hibs eased away from relegation bother, but nobody remembers the workaday Williamson with much affection at Easter Road - unlike Sauzée, who is still a legend at the club despite this utter debacle. Scott Murray

6) Tommy Docherty, Manchester United 1973-77

While Docherty led to relegation a team who six years previously had been champions of Europe - a feat incidentally bettered in spectacular fashion in 1987 by another Scottish managerial disaster zone, Billy McNeill, who took 1982 European champions Aston Villa and Manchester City down in the same season - he did take them immediately back up after a romp of a Second Division campaign. And two seasons later won Manchester United's first FA Cup for 14 years. So why is he on our list? Simply because he sued Willie Morgan for libel after the former United captain claimed on Granada TV that the United boss was the "worst manager there has ever been" - and lost. (Docherty was alleged to have demanded a £1,000 bribe to play George Best in a friendly, had duplicitously placed Denis Law on the transfer list despite promising not to and was eventually sacked for cuckolding the physio.) Anyone who has a problem with this selection can tell it to the judge. SM